Nos4a2

by Joe Hill

  “What did you say?” Tabitha asked.

  He shook his head.

  “How about some radio?” Tabitha asked, and reached past him to turn on some music.

  Wayne could not say why he preferred silence, why the idea of music made him apprehensive.

  Through a thin crackle of static, Bob Seger expressed his fondness for that old-time rock and roll. He averred that if anyone put on disco, he would be ten minutes late for the door.

  “Where did this accident happen?” Tabitha Hutter asked, and, Wayne noted distantly, there was a faint tone of suspicion in her voice.

  “We’re almost there,” Lou said.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  Lou said, “This accident happened a while ago.”

  Wayne didn’t know where they were going until they passed the country store on the left. It wasn’t a store anymore, of course, and hadn’t been for a decade. The pumps remained out front, one of them blackened, the paint boiled off where it had caught fire the day Charlie Manx stopped for a fill. The hills above Gunbarrel had their share of abandoned mines and ghost towns, and there was nothing so remarkable about a lodge-style house with smashed windows and nothing inside except shadows and cobwebs.

  “What do you have in mind, Mr. Carmody?” Tabitha Hutter asked.

  “Something Vic wanted me to do,” Lou said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have brought Wayne.”

  “Actually, I think maybe I shouldn’t have brought you,” Lou said. “I intend to tamper with evidence.”

  Tabitha said, “Oh, well. I’m off this morning.”

  He continued on past the general store. In half a mile, he began to slow. The gravel road to the Sleigh House was on the right. As he turned in, the static rose in volume, all but erasing Bob Seger’s grainy, affable voice. No one got good reception around the Sleigh House. Even the ambulance had found it difficult to send a clear message to the hospital below. Something to do with the contours of the shelf rock, perhaps. It was easy in the notches of the Rockies to ride out of sight of the world below—and among the cliffs and the trees and the scouring winds, the twenty-first century was revealed to be only an imaginary construct, a fanciful notion that men had superimposed on the world, of no relevance whatsoever to the rock.

  Lou stopped the truck and got out to move aside a blue police sawhorse. Then they went on.

  The tow truck rattled across the washboarded dirt road, easing down almost to the dooryard of the ruin. The sumac was reddening in the fall chill. A woodpecker assaulted a pine somewhere. After New Lou put the truck into park, there was nothing coming from the radio but a roar of white noise.

  When Wayne shut his eyes, he could picture them, those children of the static, those children lost in the space between reality and thought. They were so close he could almost hear their laughter underneath the radio hiss. He trembled.

  His father put a hand on his leg, and Wayne opened his eyes and looked at him. Lou had slid down out of the truck but reached back into the cab to set a big hand on his knee.

  “It’s okay,” his father said. “This is all right, Wayne. You’re safe.”

  Wayne nodded—but his father misunderstood him. He wasn’t afraid. If he was trembling, it was with nervous excitement. The other kids were so close, waiting for him to come back and dream into existence a new world, a new Christmasland, with rides, and food, and games. It was in him to do this. It was in everyone. He needed something, some tool, some instrument of pleasure, of fun, that he could use to tear a hole out of this world and into his own secret inner landscape.

  Wayne felt the metal head of the hammer against his hip and looked at it and thought, Maybe. Take the hammer and bring it down on the top of his father’s head. When Wayne imagined the sound it would make—the deep, hollow knock of steel against bone—he tingled with pleasure. Take it to the center of Tabitha Hutter’s pretty, round, smart, smug, bitch-cunt face, smash her glasses, smash the teeth right out of her mouth. That would be fun. The thought of her pretty full lips rimmed with blood gave him a frankly erotic charge. When he was done with them, he could go for a walk in the woods, back to the cliff face, where the brick tunnel to Christmasland had been. Take the hammer and hit the rock, swing the hammer until the stone split, until there was a fissure he could squeeze himself into. Swing that hammer until he cracked the world open, made a space for him to crawl through, back into the world of thought, where the children waited.

  But while he was still thinking it over—fantasizing about it—his father removed his hand and took up his hammer.

  “Oh, what is this about?” Tabitha Hutter said under her breath, and undid her seat belt and got out on her side.

  The wind soughed through the pines. Angels swayed. Silver globes refracted the light in brilliant, polychromatic sprays.

  Lou stepped off the road, picking his way down the embankment. He lifted his head—he had just one chin now, and it was a good one—and turned his wise-turtle stare on the ornaments in the branches. After a time he picked one down, a white angel blowing a gold trumpet, set it on a rock, and smashed it with the hammer.

  There was a momentary squall of feedback amid the static on the radio.

  “Lou?” Tabitha asked, coming around the front of the truck, and Wayne thought if he slid behind the wheel and put it in drive, he could run her down. He imagined the sound of her skull striking the grille and started to smile—the idea was quite amusing—but then she moved on into the trees. He blinked rapidly, to clear aside this awful, lurid, wonderful vision, and jumped down out of the truck himself.

  The wind rose, tossed his hair.

  Lou found a glitter-spackled silver ornament, a globe as big as a softball, tossed it in the air, and swung the hammer like a baseball bat. The glittery sphere exploded in a pretty spray of opalescent glass and copper wire.

  Wayne stood close to the truck, watching. Behind him, through the loud roar of the static, he heard a children’s choir singing a Christmas song. They sang about the faithful. Their voices were far away but clear and sweet.

  Lou crushed a ceramic Christmas tree and a china plum sprinkled with gold glitter and several tin snowflakes. He began to sweat and removed his flannel coat.

  “Lou,” Tabitha said again, standing at the top of the embankment. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because one of these is his,” Lou said, and nodded at Wayne. “Vic brought most of him back, but I want the rest.”

  The wind screamed. The trees lunged. It was a little frightening, the way the trees were beginning to pitch back and forth. Pine needles and dead leaves flew.

  “What do you want me to do?” Tabitha asked.

  “Bare minimum? Don’t arrest me.”

  He turned away from her, found another ornament. It was crushed with a musical tinkling.

  Tabitha looked at Wayne. “I’ve never been one for just doing the bare minimum. You want to help? Looks like fun, doesn’t it?”

  Wayne had to admit it did.

  She used the butt of her gun. Wayne used a rock. In the car the Christmas choir rose and swelled, until even Tabitha noticed it and pointed an uneasy, wondering glance back at the truck. Lou ignored it, though, continued crushing glass holly leaves and wire crowns, and in a few moments the white noise rose again in a roar, burying the song.

  Wayne smashed angels with trumpets, angels with harps, angels with hands folded in prayer. He smashed Santa, and all his reindeer, and all his elves. At first he laughed. Then, after a while, it wasn’t as funny. After a while his teeth began to ache. His face felt hot, then cold, then so cold it burned, icy-hot. He didn’t know why, didn’t give it much in the way of conscious thought.

  He was raising a blue chunk of shale to smash a ceramic lamb when he saw movement at the upper edge of his vision and lifted his head and spied a girl standing by the ruin of the Sleigh House. She wore a filthy nightgown—it had been white once but now was mostly rust-colored from smears of dried blood—and her hair was in tangles. Her pale
pretty face was stricken, and she was crying silently. Her feet were bloody.

  “Pomoshch,” she whispered. The sound of it was almost lost in the whistling wind. “Pomoshch.” Wayne had never heard the Russian word for “help” before but understood well enough what she was saying.

  Tabitha saw Wayne staring, turned her head, spotted the girl.

  “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “Lou. Lou!”

  Lou Carmody stared across the yard at the girl, Marta Gregorski, missing since 1991. She had been twelve when she disappeared from a hotel in Boston and was twelve now, twenty years later. Lou regarded her with no particular surprise at all. He looked gray and tired, sweat slicking the loose flesh of his cheeks.

  “I have to get the rest, Tabby,” Lou said. “Can you help her?”

  Tabitha turned her head and gave him a frightened, bewildered look. She holstered her gun, turned, and began to walk swiftly through the dead leaves.

  A boy came out of the brush behind Marta, a black-haired boy of ten, wearing the dirty blue-and-red uniform of a Beefeater. Brad McCauley’s eyes were stricken, wondering, and terrified all at once; he cast a sidelong glance at Marta, and his chest began to hitch with sobs.

  Wayne swayed on his heels, staring at the two of them. Brad had been wearing his Beefeater outfit in his dream last night. Wayne felt light-headed, like sitting down, but the next time he rocked back on his heels—he was close to falling over—his father caught him from behind, set one massive hand on Wayne’s shoulder. Those hands didn’t quite go with his New Lou body, made his large, gawky frame look that much more badly put together.

  “Hey, Wayne,” Lou said. “Hey. You c’n wipe your face on my shirt if you want.”

  “What?” Wayne asked.

  “You’re crying, kiddo,” Lou said. He held out his other hand. In it were ceramic shards: pieces of a smashed moon. “You’ve been crying for a while now. I guess this one was yours, huh?”

  Wayne felt his shoulders jerk in a convulsive shrug. He tried to answer but couldn’t force any sound from his tight throat. The tears on his cheeks burned in the cold wind, and his self-control gave way, and he buried his face in his father’s stomach, missing for a moment the old Lou, with his comforting, bearish mass.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice choked, strange. He moved his tongue around his mouth but could not feel his secret teeth anymore—a thought that set off such an explosion of relief he had to hang on to his father to keep from falling down. “I’m sorry. Dad. Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.” His breath coming in short, jolting sobs.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Crying. I got snot on you.”

  Lou said, “No one has to apologize for tears, dude.”

  “I feel sick.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. ’S okay. I think you’re suffering from the human condition.”

  “Can you die from that?” Wayne said.

  “Yes,” Lou said. “It’s pretty much fatal in every case.”

  Wayne nodded. “Okay. Well. I guess that’s good.”

  Behind them, far away, Wayne could hear Tabitha Hutter’s clear, steady, calming voice, asking names, telling children they would be all right, that she was going to take care of them. He had an idea, if he turned around, that he would see maybe a dozen of them now, and the rest were on their way, out of the trees, leaving the static behind. He could hear some of them sobbing. The human condition: It was contagious, apparently.

  “Dad,” Wayne said. “If it’s all right with you, can we skip Christmas this year?”

  Lou said, “If Santa tries to come down our chimney, I’ll send him back up with my boot in his ass. It’s a promise.”

  Wayne laughed. It sounded much like a sob. That was all right.

  Out on the highway, there was the ferocious roar of an approaching motorcycle. Wayne had an idea—a desperate, awful idea—that it was his mother. The children had all come back from something like death, and perhaps it was her turn. But it was just some dude out on the road, taking his Harley for a spin. It blasted past with a deafening roar, sun glinting off chrome. It was early October, but in the strong, direct light of the morning sun, it was still warm. Fall was here, winter coming right behind it, but for now there was still a little good riding weather left.

  Begun the Fourth of July 2009

  Completed over the holidays, 2011

  Joe Hill, Exeter, New Hampshire

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  - The Nice List -

  If you have enjoyed this book, then much of the thanks goes to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, at William Morrow, who pointed me to the story within the story. If it disappointed you, the fault is mine alone.

  Gabriel Rodríguez is one of my brothers. My love and thanks to him for his illustrations and friendship and vision. When I am lost, I can always trust Gabe to draw me a map.

  The work on this story began in the summer of 2009, in my friend Ken Schleicher’s garage. Ken was fixing up his 1978 Triumph Bonneville and drafted me as an extra pair of hands. Those were some good evenings and made me want to write about bikes. My thanks to the whole Schleicher clan for opening their home and their garage to me.

  The work on this story ended after my mother read it and told me she liked it and also that my final chapter wouldn’t do. She was right. She usually is. I threw out the last fifteen pages and wrote something better. Tabitha King is a creative thinker of the first order and taught me to love words, to search for their secret meanings, and to stay attuned to their private histories. More important, though, her example as a parent taught me how to be a father: to listen more than I talk, to make chores into play (or meditation), to see that the kids keep their fingernails clipped.

  In between the beginning and the ending of the work, I went for a motorcycle ride with my dad. He rode his Harley; I took my Triumph. He told me he liked my bike, even if the engine did remind him of a sewing machine. That’s a Harley snob for you. It was a happy ride, following him along his back roads with the sun on my shoulders. I guess I have been cruising his back roads my whole life. I don’t regret it.

  This book received the close eye of not one, but two copy editors: the gifted Maureen Sugden, who has kept me straight on three novels now, and my pal Liberty Hardy from RiverRun Books, who pounced on my mistakes like a catnip-addled kitten after a ball of yarn. Liana Faughnan came in at the last minute to make sure my timeline was sound. I suspect the book is still riddled with errors, but that just goes to show you can only help a person so much.

  Love and thanks to the remarkable team at William Morrow that works so hard to make me look good: Liate Stehlik, Lynn Grady, Tavia Kowalchuk, Jamie Kerner, Lorie Young, Rachel Meyers, Mary Schuck, Ben Bruton, and E. M. Krump. That goes for the crowd at Gollancz, too: Jon Weir, Charlie Panayiotou, and Mark Stay. I am particularly grateful to my UK editor and friend, Gillian Redfearn, who is a one-woman morale booster and spine-straightener.

  My agent, Mickey Choate, read this book I don’t know how many damn times, and always came back with insight, ideas, and encouragement. He made it a much better book, in every possible way.

  You know who is awesome? Kate Mulgrew is awesome, for reading this book on audio. I was charmed and blown away by Kate’s reading of my short story “By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain,” and I can’t say how much I appreciate her coming back to read this much longer story of childhood, wonder, and loss.

  Twitter is a hive buzzing with thought, argument, and geekpassion, and I’m grateful to every single person who has ever traded a tweet with me. As a world of shared ideas, Twitter is a kind of Inscape in and of itself, and a good one.

  My thanks to everyone who picked up this book, or downloaded it, or listened to it on audio. I hope like hell you enjoyed it. What a blast—what a gift—to get to do this for a living. I don’t ever wanna stop.

  Hugs and kisses and buckets of appreciation to Christina Terry, who was a constant sounding board in the final drafts of the book and who made sure I had a life and
some fun beyond my work. Thanks for getting my back, lady.

  I am also grateful to Andy and Kerri Singh, Shane Leonard and Janice Grant, Israel and Kathryn Skelton, Chris Ryall, Ted Adams, Jason Ciaramella and his boys, Meaghan and Denise MacGlashing, the Bosa clan, Gail Simone, Neil Gaiman, Owen King, Kelly Braffet, Zelda and Naomi. My love and appreciation to Leanora.

  I am a lucky guy to be the father of Ethan, Aidan, and Ryan King, the funniest, most imaginative men I know. Your dad loves you.

  - The Naughty List -

  People who skim or outright skip acknowledgments pages. Please contact the management for your free, all-expenses-paid pass to Christmasland.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOE HILL is the New York Times bestselling author of Horns and Heart-Shaped Box, and the prize-winning story collection 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of an ongoing comic book series, Locke & Key. Follow him on Twitter @joe_hill.

  www.JoeHillFiction.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  ALSO BY JOE HILL

  Horns

  Heart-Shaped Box

  20th Century Ghosts (story collection)

  GRAPHIC NOVELS

  Locke & Key, Volumes 1–6,

  with Gabriel Rodríguez

  (IDW Publishing)

  CREDITS

  COVER DESIGN BY MARY SCHUCK

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © BY SHANE LEONARD

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NOS4A2. Copyright © 2013 by Joe Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.